Long-run market equilibria in coupled energy sectors: A study of uniqueness
研究了多能源部门耦合市场中长期均衡的唯一性条件，发现即使单部门模型保证唯一性的假设成立，多部门模型仍可能出现多重均衡，并推导了确保唯一性的充分条件。
We propose an equilibrium model for coupled markets of multiple energy sectors. The agents in our model are operators of sector-specific production and sector-coupling technologies, as well as price-sensitive consumers with varying demand. We analyze long-run investment in production capacity in each sector and investment in coupling capacity between sectors, as well as production decisions determined at repeated spot markets. We show that in our multi-sector model, multiplicity of equilibria may occur, even if all assumptions hold that would be sufficient for uniqueness in a single-sector model. We then contribute to the literature by deriving sufficient conditions for the uniqueness of short- and long-run market equilibrium in coupled markets of multiple energy sectors. We illustrate via simple examples that these conditions are indeed required to guarantee uniqueness in general. The uniqueness result is an important step to be able to incorporate the proposed market equilibrium problem in more complex computational multilevel equilibrium models, in which uniqueness of lower levels is a prerequisite for obtaining meaningful solutions. Our analysis also paves the way to understand and analyze more complex sector coupling models in the future.